COP 23, which ended on Saturday 18 November, allowed the 195 parties at the negotiating table to detail the rules for implementing the first universal climate agreement and to give themselves one year – a year of dialogue throughout 2018 – to finalise the said rules and procedures and to assess the level of their emissions. For the European negotiators, this was progress, modest certainly but undeniable and encouraging.
This transition COP, the first since Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States, did not deliver any miracles: the offers on greenhouse gas emissions reductions are below the Paris targets – they would bring average global warming of over 3°C by 2100, rather than 2°C, or even 1.5°, maximum – and the poorest and most vulnerable countries were left far from satisfied (see EUROPE 11907).
Raising the level of ambition by 2020. The Talanoa dialogue (a traditional approach used in Fiji to engage in inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue), which will be launched in 2018 and brought to a conclusion at COP 24 in Katowice, Poland (December 2018), will allow the parties to assess in a fully transparent their respective level of emissions with a view to stepping up their efforts and doing better. This will be on the basis of comparable data on the responsibility incumbent on each party, without criticising those not doing so well and only to help raise the level of ambition. That is the roadmap agreed for this dialogue and the spirit in which it should be undertaken “to prepare for more ambitious action”, said COP President and Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama.
By the end of 2018, but before COP 24, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have published its report on what the target of average global warming of 1.5°C means scientifically – information of capital importance for the Talanoa dialogue.
Still much work to be done. “The spirit of Paris is very much alive. We achieved progress in Bonn on the issues that were important to the EU, such as the Paris Work Programme. But we must continue to build on this momentum in the coming months, because there is still a lot of work ahead of us before we meet in Katowice next year. The main objective must be to keep the world firmly on the path towards what was agreed two years ago in Paris”, said Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete, who negotiated for the EU in tandem with Estonian Environment Minister and President of the Environment Council Siim Kiisler.
Both were pleased to have been able finally to announce that to the EU will this year ratify the Doha amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, a decisive step pre-2020 climate action (see EUROPE 11906), and to point out that the EU mitigation target will probably be -26% by 2020 (compared with 1990), rather than-20%.
Even though the Trump administration has not had a change of mind and still intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement unless conditions more favourable to American interests can be negotiated, the United States, represented by a diplomat at the negotiating table, “played a constructive role”, in the view of German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks. The Federal states, and the U.S. private sector and civil society which support the Paris Agreement have been vociferous in counter-balancing the American pro-coal coalition. And the fact that this COP was chaired for the first time by Fiji allowed the rich countries to come to a better understanding of the major concerns of small island states threatened with disappearance.
European Parliament calls on the EU to turn away from coal. The European Parliament, which is calling on the EU to revise its 2030 targets upwards and to adopt a strategy to 2050, would have liked COP 23 to show greater determination to act swiftly. The Parliament delegation in Bonn welcomed, however, the progress made towards making the Paris Agreement operational.
“One of the most significant initiatives of this climate conference has without any doubt been the commitment of a group of countries to close coal-fired power stations swiftly, along with a move away from nuclear power. The EU should follow this example and join them as quickly as possible. The emergence of a coalition of American cities, companies and states backing the Paris Agreement is also heartening”, said MEP Yannick Jadot, who was a member of the Parliamentary delegation.
Direction Paris summit on 12 December. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will represent the European Commission at the international “One Planet” climate summit which French President Emmanuel Macron, along with the UN and the World Bank, will hold in Paris to mark the second anniversary of the agreement. This summit will take stock of and make progress on financial commitments, including those of the private sector, as he announced from the podium in Bonn. It is Macron’s hope that the summit will speed up the mobilisation of players and funding.
In 2018, before COP 24, the EU, Canada and China will jointly chair the second ministerial meeting on climate action in Brussels, in similar fashion to the one held before COP 23. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)